Utamaro's Women

Despite his justifiable fame as one of the "Floating World's" best artists, Kitagawa Utamaro's (1753-1806) life remains mysterious. He was a pupil of the ukiyo-e artist Toriyama Sekien, and may have also been his adopted son.

In the early 1780s, Tsutaya Jñsaburø, one of Japan's most influential publishers, took him in and ultimately helped launch his career as an illustrator of poetry anthologies and as a print designer.

Utamaro dominated the woodblock print world during the final decade of the 18th century by producing hundreds of prints of beautiful women. He depicted various types of women and the nuances of their moods in visually stunning half-length and bust portraits.

The intimacy and immediacy of these finely printed images was unique, and an art-loving public voraciously collected them, thus spreading Utamaro's reputation far and wide. Even today, Utamaro's woodblock prints remain among the most highly sought of all ukiyo-e imagery among collectors worldwide.